Dutch hospital airlifts virus patients to Germany

A COVID-19 patient was airlifted from the Netherlands to a German intensive care unit on Friday, the country's first such international medevac since the global pandemic first threatened to swamp Dutch hospitals in the spring.

The helicopter's take-off from a parking lot behind the FlevoHospital in Almere, 30 kilometres (20 miles) east of Amsterdam, was a reminder of how the coronavirus is again straining countries' health care systems.

The airlift to a hospital in the German city of Muenster, and another one later in the day, came amid soaring rates of infection in the Netherlands.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases has risen over the past two weeks from 24.58 new cases per 100,000 people on 7 October to 47.74 new cases per 100,000 people on 21 October.

As of Thursday, there were 463 COVID-19 patients in Dutch intensive care units.

FlevoHospital spokesman Peter Pels said airlifting patients across the border was a last but necessary resort, as other hospitals in the region around Almere said their intensive care units were too busy to take them.

Numbers have been spiking in neighbouring Germany as well, with the country’s disease control centre saying on Friday that 11,242 new cases were reported over the last 24-hour period, just shy of the record 11,278 mark set the day before.

But the country has more than 8,100 intensive care beds free at the moment, with about 21,500 occupied, according to the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine.

There’s also a reserve of around 12,700 beds that can be activated within seven days if necessary.

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